


Grow Fonder

by bbhyuckie (Missnope)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Best Friends, Blood and Gore, F/M, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, Sick Character, best friend mark, supportive jeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 00:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17457173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missnope/pseuds/bbhyuckie
Summary: —What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.You find yourself coughing up petals in the presence of your best friend.





	Grow Fonder

_What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet._

 

You had known you were sick. This disease wasn’t something that could go unnoticed for long. It started slowly, inconspicuously; you had woken up one morning and your chest felt tight. The feeling only worsened as you walked across campus to your first class.  _A cold_ , you had figured,  _I’ve come down with a cold._

A few days later, you started to cough. You couldn’t describe what was different about it, but the pain that accompanied your first bout of coughs was crippling. Your lungs felt like they were being shredded, pulled out into ribbons with every rasp.  _A bad cold._

You should have gone to the hospital sooner, and you would have, you figured, if your symptoms were more consistent. At times, nothing felt out of place. Your mind was crystal clear when you were alone in your dorm and your chest didn’t hurt. You settled on the fact that it was likely seasonal allergies, and you should stay in your room. Every time you left your dorm for your morning class, your throat felt like it was constricting and the air smelled floral.  _Okay, allergies it is._

Eighteen days after you woke up with an ache in your chest, you collapsed. You had walked into the lecture hall, made eye contact with Mark, and fell to the floor. You hadn’t fainted; you were hyper-aware of everything happening. Your breath had been knocked out of you almost forcefully and you doubled over into an episode of uncontrollable, painful coughing.  _This is the last thing I need right now,_ you looked up and saw Mark hurrying over to you with a look of horror on his face.  _Especially in front of him._

At that point, you didn’t have much of a choice but to go to the hospital. Jeno insisted on driving you after you denied an ambulance. Mark followed in his own car. The entire hospital trip went by rather quickly. Your attending doctor told you that you likely had come down with a case of strep; the back of your throat was inflamed and your tonsils were irritated, accompanied by a case of dehydration. He wrote you a prescription antibiotic and sent you on your way.  _Of course, it’s strep._

* * *

 

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Jeno asked, pressing the back of one of his hands to your forehead. His hands felt like ice.

It had been a few days since you went to the hospital, and you genuinely felt like shit. Jeno lived just down the hall and had been stopping by before his classes every morning.

“Of course,” you swatted his hand away. “It’s not like I’m going to fall apart.”

He looked you over again and was clearly unconvinced. His brow was caught in the middle and he was frowning. You didn’t like the way it looked on him.

“I’ll have Mark come to check on you once he gets out of his class. And I’ll stop by tonight with dinner.”

You opened your mouth to protest to be silenced by the look on his face. He narrowed his eyes at you and you figured you were too tired to fight him, anyway.

You finished an essay you had been pushing off and started a new series before you started to feel worse. Your head was pounding, and if you were standing you were sure you would have fallen. It was hard to ignore the slight wheeze in your throat as you exhaled. Dull panic started to stir in the back of your mind. This didn’t feel like strep.

* * *

 

You were interrupted by a knock on your door. You eyed it weakly.

“Who is it?” you called, regretting it immediately. The back of your throat was on fire.

“It’s me,” Mark’s muffled voice called back.

_Great. Not how I want to be seen._

“It’s unlocked,” your voice was quieter this time.

The door opened slowly and he peeked in. He saw you and smiled. Your chest tightened, and you weren’t sure if it was the sickness or just the way he made you feel. You smiled back beside yourself.

“That’s not exactly safe,” he motioned at the doorknob as he finally came in.

You shrugged.

His expression started to resemble the one Jeno had worn just a few hours earlier and you liked it even less on him. A smile fit his face more than worry.

“How are you feeling? You don’t look too good.”

“Well, aside from a now bruised ego, I’ve been fine.” You decided it best to leave out the fluctuation of your condition.

His expression didn’t change.

You moved to say something witty, but your body was racked by a new fit rasping. Your frame rattled and you noticed absently that the coughing wasn’t the same as it was that morning. A few days ago, your cough was harsh but it was clean and unproductive. Now, though, your lungs sounded… full, somehow.

Mark was next to you by the time you could breathe again. His hand rested at the small of your back.

“That doesn’t sound fine,” he said softly. He was close to your face. You didn’t think your face could get warmer, but despite the fever, your cheeks still managed to flush.

“Then you probably shouldn’t stick around to catch it,” you said.

He caught your eye. The concern on his face was worse from this distance.

“Please call me if you need anything,” he sounded like he was pleading with you, “I feel bad leaving my best friend to wallow in sickness.”

His words were gentle and kind, but for a reason that you couldn’t place, it felt like a knife had run through you when you heard them.

He was gone soon enough after. As the door shut, you coughed again into your hand.

To your horror, as you pulled back, you found a petal in your palm.

You stared at it for a long while. You had heard of this before; a rare disease that found its way into the lungs of people suffering from unrequited love. You shook your head slowly. This couldn’t be right. Everything in your life was fine. Your grades were great, you had close friends, you volunteered at local shelters. Of anyone, this shouldn’t have been happening to you.

You stood weakly and walked to the bathroom. You placed the lone petal on the counter before washing the accompanying blood off of your hand. The mirror stared back at you as you dried your hands. You leaned forward intently and opened your mouth. It was hard to see to the back of your throat, but the inside of your teeth had a thin sheen of blood. You turned the flashlight of your phone on and shone it into your mouth.  _Oh, god—_

You had hit the floor before you could process what you had seen. Shocked was the only word you could think of to describe how you felt at that moment. Completely and totally shocked. Your throat just looked inflamed at first, red with coughing; but it was more than that. As you adjusted the light, you could see it; petals, stuck to the back of your throat.

You don’t know how long you stayed there, on the bathroom floor. You cried without realizing it, evidenced by your damp face and worsened breathing condition. Multiple emotions washed through you as you sat there. The first was disbelief; part of your brain insisted that you were asleep and dreaming. That theory was quickly disproved as a new wave of pain flooded your system. Following disbelief, was anger. Anger was easy to feel and hard to dull. You were angry at everything. You were angry at whatever astral being decided you should come down with the disease, angry at the doctors for not seeing it, and mostly angry at yourself. You were stronger than this and smarter than letting something like this take hold of you.

But by the time Jeno showed up, the only thing you felt was afraid.

“Hello?” he called. You hadn’t realized he was inside your dorm until you heard his voice. You didn’t bother to answer him. You knew he would find you soon enough.

When he did, there was panic on his face, and you decided that it was the worst expression on his features.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” he gripped your arms and looked you over, “What happened?”

“I’m sick,” you said quietly.

“Yeah, I know that!” the exasperation in his voice was peaking, “But what happened? Why are you on the ground, are you okay?”

“I’m really sick, Jeno,” the hollowness in your voice would have scared you if you had had your wits about you.

He paused and stared at you. Your own fear was seeping into him.

Slowly, “What do you mean?”

All of the emotions that had neatly washed over you one at a time before crashed down on you at that moment. Anger, disbelief, fear,  _everything._  Your face contorted suddenly and you were crying. Jeno didn’t understand it, but he pulled you to himself anyway. He wrapped his arms around you and waited. Your tears cleared soon enough, however, you kept shuddering.

“What’s going on?” he whispered, close to your ear.

You pulled away from him and let the coughs you were holding back overtake your chest. You opened your hands and showed him the bloody petals; you noted there were more now.

His face twisted and you couldn’t find a word for the expression.

“Who?” He met your eyes.

You laughed and it sounded desperate. You knew you didn’t have to say.

Jeno stood and turned for the door, “I’m calling him.”

“Please don’t, I know he doesn’t—”

“No,” Jeno said sharply, “No, I’m not going to... I can’t just let you—... No. No.”

He wasn’t gone long. He came back with a deliberately blank face. He helped you back into bed and sat next to you without saying anything. You were thankful for that. Your hand fumbled around the blankets before finding purchase in his. He squeezed your hand but he didn’t look at you.

The situation with Mark was complicated. The two of you had been friends since freshman year of high school, but you had harbored feelings for him longer than that. He sat next to you in biology that year and you developed a painful crush on him before you had any interest in starting a conversation with him. To be completely honest, there was no reason the two of you should have become friends at all; he was smart, and loud, and kind of weird. You weren’t. By all standards, you were…  _average._

But he was Mark, and he wanted to be friends with everyone. You realized over the years that you had changed a lot to keep up with him. Some of that change was organic and beneficial, but there was a heavy cut of change that was only to be more relatable to Mark. It was stupid, you knew that. He was a sweetheart of a young man and would have wanted you to be yourself.  _Maybe,_  you thought,  _He would have loved me back if I were just myself._

It was a sick lesson some greater presence was probably trying to teach you, maybe. You felt like five-sixths of a person; mostly you, but with vital artificial parts. At some point, you resigned to the sacrifice of a complete identity in exchange for keeping him as your best friend, and that was wrong. It was too late to go back now, fate locked in a floral disease.

Mark walked in without knocking, wearing the same set of alarmed features Jeno did. He didn’t say anything at first, but he was at your bedside pulling you into a hug. He squeezed you close to his chest and your breath shallowed.

“I shouldn’t have left you earlier…” There was guilt hanging around his words.

“It’s worse when you’re around, actually,” you croaked.

He pulled away like he had been burnt. You saw the realization hit both of you at the same time; Jeno hadn’t told either of you some vital information. You didn’t want to break it to him like this— you thought the other boy had told him all the details.

“I—,” he sat slowly, “I’m so sorry.”

You looked to Jeno and he avoided your eye, still.

“What are we supposed to do?” Mark asked under his breath.

“They have to be removed,” Jeno spoke for the first time since you were on the bathroom floor, “The flowers I mean.”

“Okay? Then that’s what we do!” Mark was agitated, as though you all were wasting time sitting there.

“When the flowers are removed, the emotions are taken with them,” he raised his gaze to finally meet your, “All of them. Your memories of him will be hollow. It’s like reading the SparkNotes of a book, I guess. You keep all of the information, without the connection. Part of your life is left half-lived.”

“What if I don’t get them removed?” you asked.

Jeno almost looked offended that you would suggest it. “Then you die. You’ll suffocate to death. Unless the feelings are returned.”

You and Jeno turned to Mark, who looked like he wanted to disappear.

“I do love you, I just—…” he looked down at his hands, “Not like that. I’m sorry, I wish that I did, I really wish I did.”

“It’s not your fault, Mark.” You meant that. You didn’t blame any of this on him. How could you?

Jeno’s hand had found its way back to yours and he squeezed you gently. You needed to make a decision, but the choice felt loaded. Of course, you had to get the flowers removed. You knew it had to be done, but you were hung up on the implications. How much of you would be left?

* * *

 

A lot of you was left.

The flowers that occupied your lungs were  _climbing floribunda,_  a white rose variant. By the time you went back to the hospital for a second opinion, the vines had metastasized to your ribs and the thorns had dug their way into your pleural tissue. Roses, as the doctor explained, were an aggressive strain of the Hanahaki disease. They grew quickly and showed little sign of their flowers until they had progressed to the late stages.

Being free of the feelings you carried for Mark was terrifying before you were sedated. By the time you came out from under the anesthetic, though, there were no feelings to miss. The one-sixth of your personality that hinged on Mark’s approval was gone. You didn’t feel obligated to be someone for him anymore. You had thought you wouldn’t know who you were anymore, but in a turn of events, you left the hospital feeling more like yourself than you ever had before.

You weren’t allowed to see him for sixty days after leaving the hospital; your physician advised you that it could have adverse effects if you were exposed too soon after having the flowers removed. There were too many documented cases of the patients relapsing. Luckily for you, Jeno was more than happy to keep you company as you healed. He would visit you between classes and record the lectures for you to study in your dorm. The two of you became closer than ever.

You were sitting on your bedroom floor with him a month after your release from the hospital, eating takeout and watching Lilo & Stitch. The two of you made a habit of watching a movie together at least once a week. There wasn’t much else for you to do in the recovery wing except for talk and watch Disney films, so the tradition easily transitioned into your out-of-hospital life, too.

“Hey, Jeno?” you asked.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got a question.”

Jeno glanced over to you and saw that this was probably going to be a serious question. He paused the movie and turned his attention towards you.

“Okay,” He said, crossing his legs, “What’s up?”

You hesitated and you weren’t exactly sure why. He smiled at you reassuringly.

“How did you know so much about Hanahaki when I got sick?”

“Ah,” he smiled like he knew you were going to ask that. He sluffed off his jacket behind him and fiddled with the buttons of his top. “Before I met you and Mark, I went to a public co-ed high school. There was this person I knew, a lot like you actually. They were kind and funny and easy to get along with. They brought out the best in me.” He had reached the bottom button of his shirt. With careful hands, he pulled both sides of his button-up away from his torso. “And the worst, I guess.”

In front of you, Jeno sat with his shirt open. As he pulled the panels apart, a discolored, upside down Y was revealed; the same scar you were actively healing.

“I’ve been there, is the short answer, I guess,” he smiled at you.

Your hand reached out before your brain could catch up, and you stopped yourself inches from his chest. You looked up and met his reassuring eyes. He nodded encouragingly at you. You closed the rest of the distance between your fingertips and his surgery site. His skin was warm and completely healed, in a straight line from the middle of his sternum to where it forked just below his ribs. You would have never guessed, but it made so much sense.

When you met Jeno’s eyes again, he was closer than you remembered.

“You know… I’m glad I met you,” he said, placing his hand over yours, over his chest.

“I am, too.”

* * *

 

When you finally got to see Mark again, you were both excited. Not having contact with your best friend for weeks was hard, regardless of whether or not you remembered the feelings you had. He missed you while you were in the hospital, and often wanted to break your doctors' orders and visit you. He figured, though, he had done enough damage already.

When you saw each other again, it felt like a reintroduction; Mark may have been majorly the same, but he noticed the difference in you almost immediately. You were still you, but you weren’t  _his_  you, anymore. He felt sick as the thought passed through his head, sick and selfish. You still had the same wit and charm, but you were notably less concerned about Mark.

You were more concerned with Jeno.

It made sense, really. You and Jeno had been together in Mark’s absence, made memories Mark and you never could. It was true what they say about people bonding over traumatic experiences. Oxytocin was a powerful chemical, after all. Unfortunately though, it was also true what they say about distance, and how it makes the heart grow fonder.

As you and Jeno walked away, interlocking your hands, Mark smiled to himself. You deserved love like that. He coughed absently into his hand and pushed the resulting petal into his pocket without so much as looking at it.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr at bbhyuckie uwu


End file.
